The House will wish to know that Nigel Evans has formally resigned as Deputy Speaker, and I have received his letter of resignation with sadness. I wish to thank Nigel for his three years of service to the House as Deputy Speaker, in which he has proved to be highly competent, fair and good humoured. He has been a loyal and valued member of the team of Deputy Speakers who assist me in chairing our proceedings. I am warmly grateful to him. I will make an announcement about arrangements for the election by the House of a new First Deputy Chairman of Ways of Means when the House returns in October.

I hope that my hon. and right hon. Friends will bear with me during this personal statement. It has been a few years since I made a speech in this Chamber, and I am sad to say that this is the speech.

As many of you will know, following recent allegations I was charged with alleged offences yesterday. I now have the opportunity robustly to defend my innocence and seek acquittal. I have therefore decided that the best course of action is for me to return to the Back Benches. This is a decision that I have made myself after careful consideration.

I did not have the Conservative Whip as Deputy Speaker and I am not seeking its return until after the conclusion of events. I will sit as an independent Member of Parliament for the Ribble Valley.

It was one of the happiest days of my life when I was elected Deputy Speaker in 2010. It was an endorsement of my abilities to do the job by my colleagues, and for that I am grateful. Since these allegations, I have not been able fully to fulfil my duties in the Chair, which left me in a land of limbo. None of us was elected to the fine office of Member of Parliament to be put in that invidious position: unable fully to fulfil the reason we were sent here.

I am so grateful to the Speaker, and to the two other Deputy Speakers, the right hon. Members for Chorley (Mr Hoyle) and for Bristol South (Dawn Primarolo), for the unstinting support they have given me over the three years, but particularly since 4 May in filling in for me on my Chair duties. When I told the right hon. Member for Bristol South of my decision on Saturday, I even got a hug from her: thank you, Dawn.

I have had so many hugs, prayers and good wishes since 4 May, and I would like to thank everyone who has shown me such compassionate consideration, my family particularly, and my association who have been marvellous, and even seasoned, crusty journalists have displayed a heart which I have never before witnessed; you know who you are.

I was told I will soon see who my real friends are, and that has been true, but the truth is there have been so many of them, so thank you to my dearest loyal friends, including loyal members of my staff at Westminster and the Ribble Valley, and to you, my colleagues on all sides of the House who have spoken with me, looked after me, and just shown loving attention. Party divisions disappear at times like this—and they have, so thank you.

Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the Speaker’s Chaplain, and Andrew Tremlett, the Canon of Westminster Abbey, have given me superb spiritual guidance, which has given me the one thing that everyone in this world needs, alongside air, water and food—hope. Hope is that essential key to giving us a fulfilled life, and they have ensured that I retain my hope.

This is clearly the most painful thing I have endured in my life, alongside the loss of my mother in 2009 and the loss of my brother earlier this year. Winston Churchill said, “When you are going through hell, keep going.” That is sage advice. And so I will see this through to the end, with the support of the people who mean so much to me.

Returning to the Back Benches gives me the opportunity to speak out on issues such as the over-building of new homes in the Ribble Valley, threats to the Slaidburn doctors’ surgery and cuts to rural bus services—and so many others. It is the bread and butter of politics: giving support to the people who put me in the mother of Parliaments—my home for the past 21 years, and a place that has meant so much to me. I am proud to serve the people of the Ribble Valley, and the best tribute I can give them now is to get on with the job they sent me here to do. Thank you.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that personal statement. For the benefit of right hon. and hon. Members who were not in the Chamber immediately after Prayers when I formally notified the House of the fact of the hon. Gentleman’s resignation, I should like to repeat what I said then, just over an hour ago.

The service that the hon. Gentleman has rendered to the House as First Deputy Chairman of Ways of Means and a Deputy Speaker of this House has been exemplary. He has demonstrated to the satisfaction of colleagues throughout the House that he is competent, fair and good humoured. He has proved to be a loyal and hugely valued member of the Chair’s team. I am enormously grateful to him, and I know that the Deputy Speakers feel the same. When the House returns in October, I shall notify colleagues of the procedure to be followed for the election of a successor First Deputy Chairman of Ways of Means.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In Question 3 in Scottish questions today, something was referred to as a “separate Scotland”. I do not know what a separate Scotland is, and I presume that you do not know what a separate Scotland is, and certainly nobody is trying to create one. It is an argumentative term and a pejorative one used by the opponents of Scottish independence. I raised this issue with the Clerks yesterday and they agreed that the term should not have been on the Order Paper today. Can you assure me that “separate Scotland” will not appear again in any question on the Order Paper?

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his characteristic courtesy in giving me notice of his intention to raise it. He is, essentially, asking me whether the use of the word “separate” contravenes the rule against argument in parliamentary questions. The very fact that I am being invited to make a ruling suggests to me that a degree of controversy surrounds the word. There is a perfectly serviceable word that is used in legislation—“independent”. I think it would be best if we stuck to that in future where the rules of the House require neutral expressions. However, the use of the phrase “a separate Scotland” in debate or in supplementary questions is not unparliamentary. I hope that that is helpful.

rose—

No further point of order arises in respect of the ruling on this matter that I have given. I know the hon. Gentleman well enough to know that he would not be so unwise or discourteous as to challenge the Chair, because he is both wise and courteous.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have evidence, which I have in my hand, that French company MagForce International and Chinese company Tianjin Myway International Trading have been promoting illegal weapons of torture at the DSEI arms fair, which is being held in London docklands this week. Can you advise me how to get that information to Ministers at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as fast as possible to get them urgently to make a statement in this House about how that can have happened, especially since this is not the first time that illegal weapons have been found at DSEI?

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, she has found her own salvation. She inquires about the quickest means by which to ensure that her concern is relayed to representatives of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Those on the Treasury Bench will have heard what she had to say and I am sure that it will be a matter of only seconds before her remarks wing their way to the Secretary of State. It is then for him to decide how to respond. It is not a matter of order for the Chair but the hon. Lady is well aware of the opportunities she has to call Ministers to account and I feel sure that she will deploy the weapons at her disposal.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

This point of order from the hon. Gentleman is, I am sure, on an entirely unrelated matter.

rose—

On a separate matter?

It is, but there is a connection to the first point of order. I seek your guidance, Mr Speaker. I totally agree with your judgment on the original point of order, but may we have a judgment on when that same party attacks Scottish Labour Members of Parliament and calls them “London Labour”? That is an insult not only to the MPs but to Scotland in general. May I have a ruling on that, please?

First, I have ruled. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman, who could not conceal the evident smile on his face, is an indefatigable campaigner. He has broad shoulders and he is well able to look after himself. I think that on this occasion I have nothing to add. He has made his own point in his own way and it is on the record. I trust that his appetite on the matter is satisfied, at least for today.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about innovation in medical treatment.

It is a great honour to bring this Bill, which was introduced in the other place by my noble Friend Lord Saatchi, to the Commons. I want to take this opportunity to thank the many supporters of the Bill in this House and outside it, who come from across the political spectrum. The fight against cancer and other diseases is one cause that engenders widespread support.

Cancer, as we all know, is a scourge on society and affects the lives of millions of people in this country, so this Bill is about how we can help liberate doctors to innovate and how we can help those deeply dedicated doctors in their drive to find cures and improvements to what are in some cases very stale and even ineffectual treatments.

Cancer will touch almost every person in this country at some time in their life. Many hon. Members will have places of excellence in their constituencies where scientists may research, doctors treat, nurses care and volunteers comfort. In my constituency of Northampton North, for example, the first-class Cynthia Spencer hospice provides devoted and invaluable hospice care for those suffering from this terrible illness. For all these efforts, though, there is always more that can and must be done.

The Bill could make every doctor a researcher and every willing patient a research participant. This country has already produced 34 Nobel prize winners in medicine, but we want more so we must ensure that the UK stays ahead, and to keep pace with what is happening, we must radically change the way we innovate.

The NHS is an amazing asset to innovation because it has a huge wealth of information, all consented to, all anonymised, that is helping it find new answers. The end result could be that every willing patient was a research patient, which would mean that every time a patient used the NHS, they would be playing a part in the fight against disease. Echoing those words, the Government’s life sciences adviser, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), is joining me by sponsoring the Bill.

Unfortunately, that vision, which is shared by doctors and charities, might soon hit a roadblock—a seemingly immovable object—of the law, so that is what the Bill is designed to remedy. Let us imagine that a doctor is standing beside a patient and considering a sensible, peer group-approved innovation, to which full consent has been given, after other options have been exhausted and there is little else that can be done. At the moment, that doctor is stopped by the law—or the fear of the law, which is the same thing. The doctor must ask himself, “Do I really want to go along this route of innovation because, if I do, I will depart from the ‘standard procedure’, and then if anything goes wrong, there will be a trial at which I could be found guilty of medical negligence. Should I put my livelihood, family and reputation at risk, or should I stick to the well-worn path from which no liability can arise?” The law at present obliges the doctor to follow the status quo, even though they know full well that that standard practice leads only to a short period of poor life quality followed by death, and that is how scientific discovery is blocked by the current state of the law.

That is not how it was in the past, when innovation happened much more readily. For example, penicillin did not face such roadblocks. Present law, however, mandates that patients receive only the standard procedure, which is really the endless repetition of a failed experiment. The problem is that the law defines medical negligence as a deviation from that standard procedure, so the law’s insistence on following the standard procedure is really a barrier to progress on curing cancer. Any doctor’s deviation from standard procedure is likely to amount to medical negligence.

Standard procedure is defined simply as a procedure that would have been followed by a competent body of medical persons skilled in the aspect of medicine in question. However, innovation, by its very definition, is something new—a deviation from what went before that did not work. Without deviation from standard procedure, there is no innovation and nothing changes, and the treatment of many cancers has not changed for decades, which is one of the reasons there is no cure for cancer.

In one medical negligence case, it was said in court:

“The practitioner who treads the well-worn path will usually be safer from legal liability than the one who adopts a newly discovered method of treatment.”

The result of all this is that a doctor deciding how to treat a particular case starts with the knowledge that as soon as he or she moves away from existing and established standards within the profession, there is an automatic and serious risk that he or she will be found guilty of negligence, if the treatment is less successful than hoped. When there is only one established practice, even if it is the same course of treatment that has been applied unchanged for 40 years without any particular history of success, it will be impossible for a doctor to depart from it with confidence that he or she will not be exposed to litigation.

Some might ask why a change to the law is suddenly so urgent. It is because while the law may not have changed much, society has. The number of lawsuits filed against the NHS has doubled in four years. Last year’s payout was £1.2 billion. The Treasury provision for claims against the NHS has now reached £19 billion. Doctors are therefore increasingly frightened of being sued and even less likely to feel able to innovate. Furthermore, risk-management processes in the NHS and insurers’ policies only strengthen this roadblock to innovation. A growing fear of litigation has stifled innovation, which is why we need a change in the law to realise the well-expressed vision that every doctor can be a researcher.

We certainly do not want patients to be treated like mice, so the Bill would set out in law for the first time the obvious difference between reckless experimentation and responsible, scientific innovation. The Bill actually strengthens the ability of the medical profession to prevent reckless conduct and to control innovation properly. The good doctor will therefore feel safer in the work that he or she does, and the bad doctor will more easily be revealed as negligent.

How will the Bill do that? It will require the formal approval of any proposed innovation by a hospital’s multi-disciplinary team of doctors, so not only will the innovation need the fully informed consent of the patient, but a hospital’s own multi-disciplinary team of doctors will have to approve it. This is a severe test, more severe than the two doctors’ authorisation that is required by law in order to carry out, for example, an abortion under the Abortion Act 1967, or the two psychiatrists needed to authorise sectioning someone in a mental health institution under the Mental Health Act 1983. Under those provisions, the authorisation of two medical professionals is required. To authorise innovation as I propose, a panel of medical professionals will need to consent. It is a severe test, but however severe, it is better than the current position, in which the road ahead to any innovation in cancer treatment is closed by law.

The Bill will not cure cancer. It will be doctors who cure cancer. This legislation, however, will give those wonderful doctors of ours the certainty they need to innovate and eventually find the cure that will bring such joy to all whose lives have been affected by this dreadful disease. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Michael Ellis and George Freeman present the Bill.

Michael Ellis accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 September 2013, and to be printed (Bill 107).

I beg to move amendment 103, page 37, line 39, leave out

‘in relation to each reporting period’

and insert

‘if

(a) a formal complaint is received by the Certification Officer that would result in the Certification Officer requiring a membership audit in relation to the reporting period when the complaint was verified and

(b) the Certification Officer determined that a certificate was required.’.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 104, page 38, line 7, at end insert

‘unless—

(a) the Trade Union is appealing the membership certificate; or

(b) the Trade Union has challenged the Certification Officer’s acceptance of a membership audit certificate and invoked paragraph (a).’.

Amendment 106, page 38, line 22, leave out from ‘certificate’ to end of line 23 and insert

‘for which the trade union may request reasonable payment as per charges for requests for access to accounting periods in section 30(6).’.

Amendment 121, in clause 37, page 38, line 42, leave out

‘in relation to each reporting period’

and insert

‘if section 24ZA(1) is invoked’.

Clause stand part.

It is a great pleasure to get to part 3 under your chairmanship, Ms Primarolo. I shall speak to clause stand part as well as to all the amendments in the group. It is totally inadequate that we are discussing part 3 of this hotch-potch of a Bill without having seen the impact assessment for part 3 or any results from the curtailed consultation that was put in place at the start of the process.

It is worth putting the amendments into context. The past three days and the hundreds of e-mails that all Members have received from their constituents show how much of a dog’s breakfast the Bill is. It is in good company, following the hotch-potch of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill and the total shambles that the House witnessed during the passage of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. Part 3 of the Bill before us provides wide-ranging new powers to the certification officer on trade union membership lists, but no one, including officials of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the discussion paper, the explanatory notes, the trade unions and, I bet, even the Minister can tell the Committee what problem the Bill is trying to resolve.

The TUC stated in its evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee:

“As with part two we are unable to discern the problem that this part of the Bill is meant to remedy.”

Nigel Stanley from the TUC went on to say:

“We have asked BIS, the certification officer and ACAS through freedom of information requests whether they have received or made representations that we need to amend current powers to regulate union membership . . . We cannot find any demand for part 3.”

The only justification for part 3 has been the publicly stated view that it came out of a high-level meeting between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. What a contribution and combination that is. I wonder whether Lynton Crosby was in the room at the time.

Without any rationale for the Bill coming from the Government, perhaps we have to look for our own rationale. The reason given for the Bill by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in its discussion paper is the potential for trade union activity to affect people’s daily lives. It says:

“The general public should be confident that voting papers and other communications are reaching union members so that they have the opportunity to participate”.

My hon. Friend is aware, as we all are, of the clamour for at least 20 years for the reform of lobbying practices. Can he think of any demand for part 3? Is it not sensible to judge that this is merely an afterthought—a spiteful swipe at the trade union movement—in order to distract from the fact that the Bill does not address 95% of commercial corporate lobbyists?

My hon. Friend is right. Parts 1 and 2 have been shown over the past few days to be utterly deficient. There is no evidence, no drive, no remedy to be pursued, no problem to be resolved that would justify part 3. There is legislation in place, which I shall come on to later, which shows that membership lists from trade unions are heavily regulated already. Part 3 is merely a legislative burden on the trade unions timed to deflect attention, as my hon. Friend says, from other parts of the Bill that are completely deficient.

My hon. Friend hit the nail on the head when he said that part 3 came from the high-level discussion between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. This is a continuation of other Bills that have been introduced over the past three years on the constitution of this country. They all aim at one thing—giving advantage to the parties in the coalition in the upcoming general election. Yesterday we saw their attempt to hide from lobbying groups and not be answerable to them. Now they are trying to curtail the influence of the trade unions and the support that they give to the Labour party in particular to give their own parties an advantage. That is what this is all about.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government cannot win the next general election on the arguments so they nullify the Opposition. It is ironic that part 3 heavily regulates trade union membership lists, whereas most of the stuff attacking workers’ rights came from the report written by a certain Mr Beecroft, who donated £550,000 to the Conservative party. The Bill deals not with the Beecrofts of this world but with the ordinary working people throughout the country.

Does not part 3 show that the Bill is partisan, and is it not one of the main reasons the Bill has lost the confidence of the public?

Absolutely. Parts 1 and 2 have been shown to have lost public confidence. I am happy to be corrected, but since I came to the House in 2010 I do not think I have had this number of lobbying e-mails from concerned constituents who feel that they are going to be gagged by this Government. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), the governing parties cannot win the next general election on the arguments alone so they are trying to nullify the opposition, which is made up of trade unions, charities and lobbying organisations which do so much on behalf of our constituents throughout the country.

No evidence was put forward in the discussion paper to demonstrate that communications are not reaching trade union members or that there are shortcomings in the existing law relating to a trade union’s duty to maintain a register of members. Moreover, no evidence was produced to explain why the Government need to acquire yet further extensive powers over the lives of citizens and voters through this mechanism.

Does my hon. Friend find it as bizarre as I do that the Government are demanding that trade unions reveal their membership lists in detail, yet the Conservative party keeps its membership secret?

My hon. Friend makes an interesting intervention—the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), a Lib Dem Minister, shakes her head—and he is absolutely right; the Conservative party refuses point blank not only to give us any details of its membership, but to tell us how many members it has. I believe that is either because it cannot tell us or because its membership lists are deficient. [Interruption.] The Government Whip chunters “Tell us yours” from the Treasury Bench, but essentially we are talking about the Conservative party.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, in its justification for this part of the Bill, stated:

“The general public should be confident that voting papers and other communications are reaching union members so that they have the opportunity to participate”

because they affect everyday lives in this country. Well, if the governing party does not affect the daily lives of people in this country, I do not know who does. Perhaps we should extend the Bill’s provisions to that party. The only thing we know about Conservative party membership, of course, is that the average age is 68, which might tell us something about where the party is going.

We should not be surprised by the Government’s failure to provide any evidence, as we know that they run by opinion poll and anecdote. The House will recall the now infamous Beecroft report, which would take this country’s employment rights and health and safety landscapes back to the era of Queen Victoria. When Beecroft appeared before the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill Committee last year, he said that he had absolutely no evidence to back up such claims on compensated no-fault dismissal and the abolition of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, to name but a few, but that his assessments were based on anecdotal evidence and who he had spoken to. This “met a guy in a pub” type policy making is certainly not good government.

My hon. Friend raises some fundamental human rights issues. When I asked the Deputy Leader of the House yesterday why the Government had failed to produce a human rights memorandum, he failed to answer. Perhaps that speaks volumes—[Interruption.] I am not sure what the Leader of the House just said from a sedentary position, but perhaps he will want to respond properly in due course.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will move on to clause 37 later this afternoon, when we will address some of the issues relating to confidentiality and the European articles. [Interruption.] The Leader of the House chunters from a sedentary position that we should speak to the amendments. As I understand it, Mr Speaker has grouped the stand part debate with the amendments, and I am addressing why I think clause 36 and part 3 of the Bill are deficient, which I think is perfectly appropriate.

I was talking about the Beecroft report’s ideological attack on working people and how the Government are making it easier to fire, rather than hire, employees. That is reflected in the thrust behind amendment 103— I say this for the benefit of the Leader of the House—and subsequent amendments in this group. The Government have yet again failed to produce any evidence whatsoever on what problem they are trying to resolve and what the impact will be on membership lists. Not only do they have no evidence, but, as I mentioned at the start of my speech, they do not even have an impact assessment for this part of the Bill and they have done no suitable consultation.

My hon. Friend will remember that Adrian Beecroft appeared before the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill Committee last year. When asked detailed questions, he could give absolutely no evidence whatsoever for what he was suggesting, yet some of those suggestions can be found in this Bill today.

Absolutely, which is why we should be addressing those issues in the Beecroft report, because they influence part 3 of the Bill. Perhaps Ministers, rather than chuntering from a sedentary position, might at last answer some of these questions when they come to the Dispatch Box.

I was talking about the lack of suitable consultation. As far as I am aware, the Government have still not published an impact or cost assessment for part 3 —[Interruption.] The Minister says that they have, but it was not there at 10.30 this morning. They did publish assessments for parts 1 and 2 back in July. In fact, the equality assessment states:

“A full impact assessment will be developed after, and informed by, a period of targeted consultation and engagement of a range of experts.”

But the Committee is debating this Bill before any of that work has been either completed or formally published.

On the question of consultation, my hon. Friend has quoted from the TUC’s evidence, which was given to my Committee in very short order indeed, because the Committee decided that the House should have some evidence. The reality is that this part of the Bill appeared eight working days ago; it appeared just before the end of July, the day before the House rose, and Second Reading was the day after the House returned, so that is three working days, and that was a week ago. If one wanted part of a Bill to not be properly scrutinised, this is precisely how one would do it. Either this House will do the scrutiny properly, or the other place will do it in due course.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. As Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, he has done some wonderful work on the Bill, and at very short notice. It is a great credit not only to him and the Committee’s staff, but to the other Members who serve on it. He has demonstrated how the Government operate. If one wanted to put something through that was ideologically driven but did not want it to be scrutinised, one would do as the Government have done with this Bill.

Was not my hon. Friend astonished by the fact that, while 11 Conservative MPs last night voted against the low, mean attack on charities, not a single Lib Dem MP did so? Why does he think they are so enthusiastic to embrace their own extinction?

My hon. Friend tempts me to use unparliamentary language, but I will not go down that route. It is a fact that last night every single Lib Dem Member went into the Lobby with the Government to vote for part 2 and that it was only Conservative rebels who decided not to put up with the Bill. I think that is unfortunate.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will take one more intervention, but then I will have to make some progress.

I do not want to tempt the hon. Gentleman into using unparliamentary language, but he is factually incorrect. I do not wish to have yesterday’s debate about charities all over again, but the fact is that reassurances were given by the Government that there is a lot of work to be done, in which I hope we will all engage so that we can bring forward improvements on Report. I would have thought that we should all be working constructively towards that end.

rose—

Order. Perhaps we could return to clause 36 and the amendments before us. General Third Reading points about the entire Bill, or any comments about the whole part, are not in order.

Thank you, Ms Primarolo. You are absolutely right. That would have tempted me to discuss the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) producing amendments to other Bills in Committee and then not following through on the Floor of the House.

I was talking about the Government’s failure to produce any evidence, which I think feeds into amendment 103, because it is critical to the operation of the entire part, in relation to clause 36. My second point about the Department’s consultation is that it has not published or responded to any of the responses. The only information that Members of the House have seen is when people who have responded to the BIS consultation have self-published them, and I do not think that is good enough.

Trade unions are already heavily regulated, not just with regard to membership, but in other areas, too. No other membership organisations, voluntary sector groups, businesses or, indeed, political parties in the UK are subject to equivalent rules. There are already extensive regulations through the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1992 and the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998—a fact that the Government seem to have wholeheartedly disregarded in bringing forward the Bill—and the responsibility trade unions have to the Information Commissioner.

When the hon. Gentleman refers to the 1992 Act, he is of course referring to legislation from the mid-1980s that was virtually lifted into that Act. Does he not think that it is now time for a general review of that 1980s legislation?

If the hon. Gentleman wants to bring forward a general review of any legislation, he is more than welcome to do so. Perhaps in my haste I forgot to use the word “consolidated”. I was referring to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, because of course it consolidated lots of legislation from the mid-1980s.

It is self-evident that trade unions want to have good membership records; I cannot see why anyone would argue that they do not. It is in trade unions’ own interests to engage with members just as any voluntary organisation wishes to maximise membership fees and ensure that people want to remain as members. Unions are nothing without their members; they exist to represent their members. They invest in a wide array of ways of communicating with them—from printed magazines, leaflets and posters, to websites, social media and e-newsletters.

Let us look at what clause 36 proposes for unions with more than 10,000 members. Should political parties have to account for their members? On Second Reading, the Leader of the House said:

“Trade unions are influential participants in public life. They have an important role representing members’ interests both with specific employers and in wider public debate.”—[Official Report, 3 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 184.]

Who would argue with that? On the certification of trade union membership details, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills discussion paper says on page 4:

“Trade union activity has the potential to affect the daily lives of members and non- members.”

Surely those definitions apply as much to political parties as to trade unions. Political parties represent their members’ interests, influence wider public debate and can affect the lives of members and non-members. Trade union members represent a very wide and varied section of the general public.

The House of Commons Library brief shows that there are 7.2 million trade unionists. They represent a cross-section of ages, are split evenly in terms of gender and are well represented in terms of race, disability and types of work. Surely trade unions are in a good position to influence and share public opinion. In sharp contrast, there is an organisation that is the complete opposite and totally unrepresentative—the aforementioned Conservative party, which refuses to say how many members it has.

On a point of order, Ms Primarolo. My Committee looked at the White Paper on the lobbying Bill about 18 months ago. It made no mention of anything to do with the trade unions. The trade union provisions appeared in July, one day before the House rose—a bit about trade unions was bolted on to a Bill that all of us in the House had already dealt with as a lobbying Bill. Is it in order for those provisions to have been added when the House has been under the misapprehension that the Bill is about lobbying? Is this not a hybrid Bill and therefore disqualified from discussion in the House?

The hon. Gentleman is very experienced and has been a Member for a long time. As he knows, what he has asked is not a point of order. The House has given the Bill a Second Reading, and his points are for debate, if necessary, on the Floor of the House. They are certainly not a matter of order for the consideration of the Chair today.

Thank you, Ms Primarolo, for that ruling on an important point of order. I remind my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, that other stuff has been bolted on to Bills, including the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—disgracefully, the agricultural wages board was abolished at the last minute in the House of Lords without any political debate in this House.

Before the Government start lecturing unions about transparency, they should take a long, hard look in the mirror, subject themselves to this Bill and publish their own membership audit certificate.

Will my hon. Friend share with the Committee why he thinks a Government who came to power saying that they would cut and eliminate red tape should apply it to the trade unions?

That is a good question. The Government have a policy initiative of taking out two regulations for every one brought in. Will the Minister say which regulatory burden she will be removing from the trade union movement, given the regulations that she has just put on the statute book? The Government have wholeheartedly refused to deal with zero-hours contracts, blacklisting, payday loans and the high cost of credit, but they are unnecessarily piling regulations on to the trade unions.

Is not my hon. Friend’s point the fact that the Government do not want to regulate people such as Lynton Crosby, yet do want to punish trade unions, whose only sin is to represent the ordinary working person? The only things they have ever campaigned for are people’s right to work, the ending of zero-hours contracts, decent pay and conditions, and decent standards. They are being hit, yet all the rich lobbyists such as Lynton Crosby are allowed to get off scot free.

My hon. Friend tempts me to stray from the amendments, but she is absolutely right. Week after week, the Prime Minister tells us at Prime Minister’s questions how wonderful the car industry is. The car industry in this country was saved by a partnership of people who owned the car industry, the trade unions and the work force all working together. The industry survived and is now in a healthy position—all credit to all those involved.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on outlining why the unions are being singled out. If the issue is fairness, should not shareholders of every company be balloted every time approaches are made to the Government?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why I am so concerned that clause 36 has been added to this part of the Bill without discussion or proper consultation. There are already strict legislative mechanisms to look after trade union membership, but none at all to regulate shareholders or indeed members of the Conservative party. The fact that that party will not say how many members it has shows that we need regulation for that issue as well.

Could not the shadow Minister answer our hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) in this way? If on a lobbying Bill we are allowed to add in stuff about charities and trade unions, could not our hon. Friend produce another part to the Bill that addressed the issue he raises about shareholders? Obviously, that would be in order—anything can be added. Hon. Members from across the House could add stuff on child care, foreign policy or the Government’s war-making powers. Bringing forward a Bill and bolting on a part such as this at a very late stage is an abuse. It is surely not in order.

Order. As I said to the hon. Gentleman, I will decide what is in order. If a Bill has unrelated purposes in it, that does not necessarily make it a hybrid Bill in procedural terms. It would be as well for us to concentrate on the points before us now.

Thank you for that ruling, Ms Primarolo. All I would say is that my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) is one of the most experienced people in the House. Perhaps he could bring forward an amendment on Report to consider the issue of regulating shareholders.

I’ll get on the phone.

I am sure that he will be phoning round urgently to get that going.

rose—

I will give way once more, and then I must make progress.

The hon. Gentleman must appreciate that shareholder registers are much more highly regulated than union registers. That is one reason why we need to see the changes.

I do not think that shareholders are balloted on remuneration; they do not have much ability to stop remuneration packages. They are not balloted on political donations or the overall direction of the company. In fact, individual shareholders in businesses are very weak indeed.

rose—

I am happy to give way one last time to the hon. Gentleman.

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 does deal with votes for remuneration. Indeed, companies have to have annual votes for political donations—unlike unions, which vote only every 10 years to see whether they have a political fund at all.

At least when everybody is balloted on anything to do with trade union membership, it is completely and utterly transparent because it is already regulated. That is why we do not need this part of the Bill; trade unions are rather heavily regulated already.

I move on to amendment 104, on the membership audit certificate. The Bill states that a union must send any membership audit certificate in relation to the annual reporting period to the certification officer at the same time as the trade union annual report. That may be good and well, but there is absolutely no natural justice for the trade union itself; that point has been made forcefully by the National Union of Teachers. What if the membership certificate is challengeable? It would not be correct for a document of such magnitude to be delivered to the certification officer, with all their new regulatory, enforcement and investigatory powers, without allowing the trade union an opportunity to appeal what the certificate says.

There are no mechanisms at this stage for the union to make representations to the certification officer on the content of the certificate. That does not seem to be a proper process of natural justice or, indeed, fairness. The methods that assurers will follow to determine a membership audit certificate are not yet known. Moreover, given that there is already a well-established body of law covering the membership lists of trade unions, there should be a proper mechanism to appeal or challenge a certificate.

In the absence of a clear process, trade unions should have the right to challenge the certification officer’s acceptance of a membership audit certificate. This should involve a pause in publication and the right for the union to make representations on the content of the certificate, with ultimately, perhaps, an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, where qualified judges can make a determination that any qualifications on an audit certificate are valid and appropriate. The amendment would pause the sending of a membership audit certificate to the certification officer if the trade union is appealing the certificate or has indicated to the certification officer that he should not accept the certificate and the trade union will be appealing its content through a process to be determined. That is a fair and reasonable way to uphold natural justice and provide a degree of certainty in the system. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendment.

Since the Government have been unable to justify what this part of the Bill is trying to achieve and will not even tell us their party’s own membership levels, we must start from a position of determining whether the existing system is working. The Opposition will do that work for the Government if they are not willing to do it. As the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) said, since the mid-1980s every trade union has been under a duty to compile and maintain a register of the names and addresses of its members. That duty is provided for in section 24 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Under that Act, a trade union has a duty to maintain a register of names and addresses of its members and a duty,

“so far as reasonably practicable”,

to ensure that entries in the register are kept up to date. Section 24 also provides that a union must allow any member, on reasonable notice, to ascertain whether the register contains an entry relating to him or her and, if requested, supply a copy of any such entry. This means that the trade union has an existing obligation in law to ensure that its records are accurate.

The existing law specifies that there is an obligation to remove from the register the names of those no longer wishing to be members, that the primary responsibility for informing a union of a change of address is that of the member—I hope that hon. Members remember that part, in particular—and that there is a duty to secure an accurate register

“so far as reasonably practicable”,

which permits a margin of error. The remedy for failure to comply with these requirements is by way of complaint to the certification officer or the courts. Section 25 of the Act states:

“A member of a trade union who claims that the union has failed to comply with any of the requirements of section 24…may apply to the Certification Officer for a declaration to that effect.”

The main thrust of amendment 103 is that, in our view, clause 36 is without foundation and encourages vexatious inquiries for no purpose. I also contend that it will not make membership lists any more accurate. I will be interested to hear whether the Minister has any evidence whatsoever that demonstrates that overlaying this law on to the existing law will make trade unions’ membership lists any more accurate.

On Second Reading, the Leader of the House said of the clause:

“It will require trade unions visibly to demonstrate that they know who their members are and can contact them. The principle that unions must be able to contact their members”—

this is key—

“is well established in legislation.”—[Official Report, 3 September 2013; Vol. 184, c. 567.]

He is right; it is well established in law already. The facts bear this out, and I will give some of them to highlight how detailed membership information already is, as shown by the extensive annual reports published on the certification officer’s website. First, the certification officer’s annual report for 2012-13 says that 166 trade unions submitted returns—not membership lists but returns—recording a total of 7,197,415 members, a figure that does not appear to be inaccurate, compared with 7,261,210 in the previous year: again, a very exact figure. The largest reduction in membership was in the construction sector, which perhaps says more about the Government’s policies than trade union membership.

Secondly, the annual return has to include a copy of the auditor’s report on the accounts, allowing the certification officer to compare revenue from dues with the numbers reported. In 2012-13, the last full year for which returns have been published on the certification officer’s website, the returns showed that income from members increased by 1.3% to £873 million. The returns also show that the total number of contributing members was about 90.5% of the total membership, compared with 89.4% in the preceding year. There are a number of detailed reasons why those figures differ, but to go into them would rule me out of order. As I am trying to demonstrate, the information is already available in the public domain for anyone to dig into. It is on the certification officer’s website, transposed from the annual reports of each of the 166 trade unions that submitted their returns. I would think that any reasonably independent person looking at those publicly available reports would agree that the Government already have extensive information-gathering powers on the finances and membership of trade unions.

Significantly, in 2012-13 not a single trade union member lodged a complaint with the certification officer about the maintenance of the register’s names and addresses.

The hon. Gentleman says that no one made a complaint. Can that not be turned around? If members of the public suffer when a service is removed because of a fraudulent union vote and they cannot go about their daily work, why should only members of the union be able to complain about that and ask for an investigation?

Members of the public are suffering not because of the trade unions but because of the policies of the Government. While the hon. Gentleman continues to attack ordinary working people up and down this country, people will be looking at this at home and thinking how out of touch this Government are.

I repeat that in 2012-13, significantly, not a single trade union member out of the 7,197,415 members registered with the certification officer made one complaint to him about the maintenance of the registers of members’ names and addresses—that is, not one complaint from nearly 7.2 million people. Let me emphasise that the trade unions and the certification officer work very closely together because they have a mutual interest in ensuring that processes are accurate and transparent. The certification officer’s own figures bear this out, and it is worth recording them; it is a shame that the hon. Gentleman does not have a piece of paper and a pen to write them down. Some of the figures may shock Members because they reaffirm how much of this Bill is completely ideologically driven and total and utter nonsense.

In the past five years, the certification officer has had no complaints to adjudicate on from, if we take the figure of 7.2 million, a total of nearly 40 million people on the membership registers. In fact, he has had only six complaints since 2000. Five of those were dismissed and he did not even issue a declaration on the sixth. Only 10 complaints have gone to a decision since 1987.

Is the hon. Gentleman maintaining that because union members are not complaining about their own unions everyone else should be content?

I keep giving way to the hon. Gentleman to be polite, but his interventions are complete nonsense. We are talking about 7 million to 12 million people being on the registers of trade union members every single year going back to 1987. That information is verifiable under current legislation and publicly available on the certification officer’s website. Yet all the hon. Gentleman can say is that there is a problem. Why do we need this Bill to go beyond the existing legislation? I am happy to give way to him again if he wants to tell me, in no more than one intervention, why part 3 and clause 36 are necessary.

People who are not members of a union may have a complaint against, for instance, a vote that is taken, and therefore a proper investigation procedure is needed.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the registration of 7.2 million trade union members. If an individual member of a trade union on that list has a complaint, I do not see any reason why they would not raise it.

My hon. Friend will be aware that the legal strictures on trade unions with regard to balloting are among the tightest in the world; they are certainly the tightest in the European Union. I can think of one ballot for industrial action that was ruled illegal because a comma was in the wrong place. The idea that trade unions—this is the notion suggested by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly)—are conducting fraudulent ballots left, right and centre is simply illusory.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are getting to the crux of the issue, because it is becoming clear exactly why this part has been included in the Bill. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the accuracy or otherwise of the membership lists of trade unions. If the Committee does not believe me, it should listen to Lord Tyler, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on constitutional affairs, who said that one explanation for this part of the Bill is the role that some unions play in the Labour party:

“The third arm of the Bill is about ensuring that trade unions have accurate membership lists. We will listen carefully to what people have to say about how the detail of this is set up, but the principle seems beyond dispute. The membership numbers of a trade union have a bearing on how much money they can give to a political party through their political funds. In this sense, the trade unions have a unique role in UK politics. It is therefore important for transparency’s sake that the membership lists are accurate.”

I agree with Lord Tyler that it is important that the lists are accurate, but they are already heavily regulated in law. I think this has more to do with the Government’s obsession with the Labour party and trade unions than with legislating to help hard-working, ordinary people.

I had hoped that we would get an explanation as to why this part of the Bill is essential. If the only argument that can be made is that the public should be able to complain about a controversial ballot, surely if it was that controversial it would be taken up by the trade union movement and a trade unionist would object to it rather than wait for a member of the public to do so.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. No general secretary of a trade union, whether it is affiliated to the Labour party or not, would take strike action on the basis of a 51:49% vote of its membership. It would also be concerned about the legality of its membership list if any of it was found to be inaccurate, but the point is that legislation on the accuracy of membership lists already exists. It is in the union’s best interests—this has nothing to do with strike action—to have and maintain accurate membership lists, because it wants to communicate with its members, and it is also in the members’ interests to ensure that the unions have accurate details.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill was supposed to deal with moneys being exchanged so that people could pursue personal agendas to, in effect, line their pockets? We have heard about lobbying scandals, but the Bill was never intended to cover trade union members who write to their local MPs to say, “I don’t agree with zero-hours contracts,” or, “My pay is absolutely rubbish; could you please fight for my pay and my terms and conditions?” That is not what the Bill was meant to be designed for, yet it is being used as a weapon to hit the ordinary working person.